Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.
--William Shakespeare (Feste in Twelfth Night)
We don't all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even Little Red Riding Hood.
--Ralph Ellison.
To hold a pen is to be at war.
--Voltaire
Everything we write will be used against us or against those we love. These are the terms. Take them or leave them.
--Adrienne Rich
Author: A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting generations to come.
--Montesquieu
We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are.
--Anais Nin
Fiction is fact distorted into truth.
--Unknown.
Real people are more important than writing. Life is always more important than art. If I hadn't had my children, I couldn't have written more and better; I would have written less and worse.
-- Margaret Laurence.
Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.
-- Mark Twain
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
-- Jessamyn West
Impressions received by the eye are on fire.
--the Buddha.
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
--Tom Clancy.
The universe is quite a stage.
--Carol Ann Schell.
Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can play weird--that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple complicated is commonplace-- making the complicated simple, awesomely simple--that's creativity.
--Charles Mingus.
We can't understand the universe. For heaven's sake, it's the universe. But we can make up stories that we can understand.
--Terry Pratchett.
The greater writer seldom regards himself as a personality with something to say: his mind is simply a place where something happens to words.
--Northrop Frye.
What is art but a close clinging to a bit of life that you have looked into most deeply?
--Louise Brooks
Any fool can write, but it takes wisdom to know how to erase.
--Rabbi Israel Salenter.
A writer's ambition should be... to trade one hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years' time and for one reader in one hundred years.
--Arthur Koestler
It's never too late -- in fiction or in life -- to revise.
--Nancy Thayer.
The sound must seem an Echo to the sense.
--Alexander Pope.
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
--Jack London.
Every man is bound to leave a story better than he found it.
--Mary Augusta Ward.
Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.
--H.L. Mencken
Get your facts straight first; then you can distort them as you please.
--Mark Twain.
Although they are only breath, words which I command are immortal.
--Sappho.
The audience very seldom saw a character enter a room and say, "Hello." Instead, the viewers got to the room while the characters were in mid-argument-and because of that they were instantly drawn in, suckered, hooked.
--Larry Brody
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private, and wash your hands afterwards.
--Woodrow W. Smith
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
--Scott Adams.
Poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
--Aristotle
Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.
--Pablo Picasso
As I writer reading, I came to realize the obvious; the subject is the dreamer dreaming.
--Toni Morrison.
I never saw an author who was aware that there is any dimensional difference between a fact and a surmise.
--Clara Clemens
Write your scenes as short, two page stories and see how much more immediate it will make your entire script.
--Larry Brody
If you write a story about a soldier going AWOL and kidnapping a pregnant woman and finally shooting her in the head, it's called searingly realistic, even though it's never happened in the history of mankind. Whereas if you write about two people falling in love, which happens about a million times a day all over the world, for some reason or another, you're accused of writing something unrealistic and sentimental.
--Richard Curtis
There is no short-cut to art; one has to work hard, be open and flexible in your mind, keep the child alive inside you, and through a whole lifetime be ready to learn new things and-of course-be mentally prepared for a hard punch on your nose--especially when you think you are doing well.
--Bente Borsum.
If I had more time I would have written less.
--Mark Twain
